A New Teaching with Authority (3)
Ninomae Hitomi had landed herself in a thoroughly awkward predicament.
"Hee. So you're Ninomae-chan, huh?"
"Ah, um, well…"
"Mind if I call you Nino-chan? That's fine, right?"
Stepping out for a night walk because sleep simply wouldn't come had seemed like a perfectly good idea. It was night, yes, but a look outside had shown more people wandering about than she'd expected, so she'd figured there wouldn't be any real trouble. The moon was bright, besides.
"Anyway, wanna hang out? Hmm?"
"No. The others are waiting for me back at the inn…"
But a crowd brought problems of its own, and Ninomae had forgotten that. At this very moment, Ninomae Hitomi was being hit on.
"C'mon, a little bit's fine, isn't it— onee-san."
By a blonde gyaru, of all people.
Ninomae got hit on often enough that she ought to have been used to it, and yet she had no idea what to do. The reason was simple. Never once in her life had she been hit on by a high school girl in full uniform—and a stubborn one, at that.
"Ahaha……."
She sat on the bench and did nothing but dart her eyes this way and that. A hollow little laugh kept slipping out of her, but her thoughts were a considerable tangle.
How on earth do I get her to leave…….
She was fretting over exactly that when—
"Ninomae-san!"
A familiar voice reached her ear. Her head turned on reflex, and only then did a name long buried in memory rise to the surface.
"Shion-san…!"
The moment she saw the woman striding toward her, it felt for all the world as if a savior had come down from on high. …Even if the ensemble of jeans and a katana defied every explanation.
"Are you all right?"
"Ah, yes. I'm fine. It's just… there's someone being a little persistent……."
"Persistent?"
Only then did Han Seoyeon shift her gaze to the figure standing in front of Ninomae. The other seemed to notice her approach and turned as well. Seoyeon hardened her expression and leveled a light glare at the girl. For most people, that alone was enough to make them peel away—whether out of fear, or from assuming a companion had come to collect her.
The reaction she got, however, was highly unusual. The girl's eyes went wide, and she covered her mouth, pale-pink nails flashing.
"Natacchi?"
"…Setsuku?"
"……You two know each other?"
Seoyeon answered a beat late, and Ninomae murmured the question with a flustered look of her own. She simply could not have imagined that a blonde high school girl hitting on women in the dead of night would turn out to be an acquaintance of Seoyeon's.
"Ah, yes… An acquaintance from the Church. Her name is Shishi…"
"Eru."
"Pardon?"
"Changed it three years ago. Mika Eru."
Ah… right. It wasn't a good name to begin with.
Han Seoyeon nodded, accepting it.
"No way you were someone Natacchi knew. Wait— is she precious to you?"
"Well. She is precious to me."
"Hueh?!"
Ninomae's face went red at the answer, given without a moment's hesitation, but fortunately the situation seemed to be settling without any real clash.
"But, Shion-san. Is something the matter? How did you end up all the way out here?"
"Hm? I came looking for you, of course. I heard you'd gone out and hadn't come back for quite some time."
"Uh… I only stepped out for a bit. Ten minutes, maybe a little more……."
Ninomae said as much, then checked her phone without thinking… and her face locked stiff.
"Huh? Why? Why is the time……."
Messages and missed calls from Tenka. Word from Han Seoyeon as well. Failing to notice that much could, at a stretch, be written off as carelessness. You'd have to be fairly inattentive for it to happen, but still. The hour and more that had somehow slipped past, however, could not be explained at all.
No matter how she turned it over, she couldn't have left the inn much more than ten minutes ago. She had come out for a walk. Wandered a little.
…Wandered.
And then—
"……."
Why? Ninomae Hitomi's hands trembled.
Since when have I been talking with this girl…?
She had no memory of it. Not of sitting down on this bench, and not of the moment the girl had come up and started to speak.
"Why… am I here?"
Ninomae's voice had gone past confusion and into fear. Listening to it, Han Seoyeon delivered her diagnosis.
"Dunno if it was really a 'fox' that lured Nino-chan out, thooough."
"Wh-what on earth is going on, Shion-san?!"
"It's simple. You were being led off somewhere by an anomaly, and this Setsu— Mika Eru stopped you."
It was far more dangerous than she had thought. Dangerous enough that getting picked up by some bad man would have been something to laugh off. Ninomae hitched in a sharp little breath.
"I-I'm sorry. There were so many people outside that I thought it would be safe……."
"Ah, Nino-chan. Those aren't actually peop—"
"Quiet. That isn't the important matter right now."
Eru had been about to say something, but Han Seoyeon cut her off at once. The girl leaned in and whispered, plainly puzzled.
"Not important? Those things walking around over there aren't even humaaans."
"I know. Those are stray spirits, set out to lure Ninomae-san away as well. But there's no need to spell it out and frighten her any further, is there?"
Ninomae was timid enough as it was. Better to trim away anything that might leave a trauma, even a little.
"More to the point— why are you here? This wasn't your assigned district, as I recall."
"Ah… that. The vibe around here's been real unsettled latelyyy."
Eru gave a shrug.
"Five people have gone missing in the past week. So I got stuck with a pain-in-the-ass dispatch, y'knooow."
"Missing?"
"Nope. Kamikakushi."
Kamikakushi—a word for a disappearance that leaves no trace. In the old days it was blamed on gods, buddhas, or yokai, and since the culprit is often an anomaly in truth as well, the meaning isn't far off.
"…I don't know the full circumstances, but if stray spirits, and a fox besides, are swaggering about this openly, the guardian deity clearly isn't doing its job."
Han Seoyeon let out a sigh.
"And Natacchi?"
"The trip… is the surface of it. I came to look into that guardian deity. There were signs something anomalous was involved, so I meant to visit the shrine once the sun was up tomorrow."
That had been the plan, at any rate. Murmuring as much, she looked at Ninomae.
"If people are actually being taken, and it keeps happening, then I have no choice but to change the plan. We can't afford any more victims."
She held a hand out to Ninomae, still seated on the bench.
"First, let's return to the inn, Ninomae-san. Please don't let go of my hand until we're back."
"U-until we're back?"
"Yes. You've already been bewitched once. There's no harm in being careful."
"W-we walked quite a ways to get here, and we'd just… keep going like this? Ehehe……."
For some reason Ninomae seized Shion's hand in a hurry, as if this were a chance she couldn't let slip.
…Well. If she thinks she might go through something like this again, I suppose it would be frightening.
"Unnie's still hopeless at reading people's feelings in the weirdest places, huh…"
"What was that, all of a sudden? Picking a fight?"
"No, I'm saying I'll come along too. More people who can actually fight is better, yeah?"
"Well… all right. That would be better."
"And."
Eru grinned and tacked it on.
"We're in a hurry, so wouldn't it be better to just scoop her up and run?"
"Hmm. True."
"Fweh?"
"Pardon me, Ninomae-san."
"Hyaaah?!"
Without a shred of hesitation, Han Seoyeon swept Ninomae up into a princess carry. Ninomae's body went rigid in her arms.
"Auuu…"
"I went this far for you, so next time you seriously gotta go on a date with me, Nino-chan."
"Y-yes, nyeheeh…"
Went this far? Han Seoyeon briefly wondered. But well— in a sense, Eru had saved her from a dangerous mess in which she'd nearly been lured off by a fox. She settled on that conclusion.
A secluded night under a risen full moon. A princess carry. Caught in a situation stitched together out of exactly those things, Ninomae Hitomi opened her mouth.
"Uweeeegh……."
It was a romantic event. —If only the speed of travel hadn't been comparable to a roller coaster.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fi— ugh, I'm fine."
Under Han Seoyeon's worried gaze, Ninomae wobbled to her feet. The situation already looked urgent; she couldn't very well pile more worry on top of it. There was no chance Seoyeon had failed to notice the state she was in, but she understood that feeling, and so she didn't point it out.
"What the hell's going on?"
Akaba Akane watched the pair with her arms folded. Aside from the manager, everyone else was there as well. They'd raised a considerable racket, and the rest had probably come spilling out to see what was the matter.
"It's an emergency. Kamikakushi, caused by an anomaly. Not a one-off— ongoing. Just now, Ninomae-san was very nearly taken."
The voice delivering the report was quick. The tone stayed flat, but the way she laid out nothing but the facts, and did it cleanly, carried the urgency all on its own. From that atmosphere, everyone gathered seemed to have grasped how serious this was.
"So. What's the plan?"
"We'll go to the shrine. There's a good chance it'll come to a clash."
"…Haah. Then I'm coming too."
Akane sighed, and added,
"I may not look it, but I used to be a shrine maiden. If it's shrine business, I figure I'll be at least a little help sorting out what's going on."
"If Akane-chan's going, then me too!"
At that, Tsunashi Tenka shot her hand straight up. A shrine maiden, and a werewolf who ranked among the considerably strong. They'd be a help if anything, certainly not a hindrance, and so Han Seoyeon nodded.
"Eheheee, should I go toooo? Looks like a fun one, it doees."
Even the maid, Momomomo Chisa, cut in. She was the sort who stayed on despite causing every kind of incident, purely on the strength of her ability, so she would probably be useful… but Seoyeon hesitated.
"Then what about the escort?"
"Ah, if it's that, maybe I could do it?"
"Eru?"
And then Mika Eru joined in as well. The others turned their eyes on her. Most of the people here were meeting her for the first time, after all.
"If I may— who is this person?"
"A fellow Holy Knight. Her posting is the Japanese diocese, though."
The Coordinator. Tuning Fork Mika Eru Michael. Han Seoyeon had introduced her in place of that whimsical title. Ironic, perhaps, that even the name she bore now was an improvement on the one from before the change.
"In a straight brawl, she's above me. Guarding this inn on her own probably wouldn't even register as a task."
"Eheheh, praise me all you want, nothing's coming out of it, 'kay?"
A gyaru beaming a bright smile while flashing a V with her fingers. Honestly, she didn't leave a very trustworthy impression, but… there was a far more extreme example on hand of ability and character failing to match, and so everyone more or less accepted it.
"Sooo, we headin' out? Right nooow?"
"Then I'll grab my gear, and we'll leave at once."
Han Seoyeon said as much and started for her room, then seemed to remember something and turned back to stand before Ninomae.
"Ninomae-san. This."
"This is… the necklace you lent me before, isn't it?"
"I glossed over it at the time, but it's a sacred relic in its own right. Keep it on you, and it should help protect you."
A cross necklace, unclasped from her own throat and handed over on the spot. Ninomae took it in both hands, then clutched it tight, as if it were something precious.
"Please be careful, Shion-san."
"If you're the one asking."
Han Seoyeon offered a faint, gentle smile.
"Ehh. Natacchi, nothing for me?"
"Would a sword do? I wasn't going to take this one with me."
So saying, she unfastened the blade at her hip.
"…I've been wondering since we met. Why a katana?"
"It's a weapon that, paired with just about any outfit, lets an ordinary person write it off as cosplay and leave it at that."
"Ah."